French cash van driver who made off with $3.2 m haul: charged

The driver of a French cash delivery van who made off with about three million euros ($3.2 million) was charged and remanded in custody on Saturday, prosecutors said.

Adrien Derbez, 27, disappeared at the wheel of his armoured car Monday morning, leaving two colleagues stranded outside a Western Union office in the northern Paris suburb of Aubervilliers.

The Loomis company armoured van was found soon afterwards a few blocks away with its doors wide open but without the bags of cash.

Derbez was arrested on Tuesday in the city of Amiens, some 160 kilometres (100 miles) north of Paris, after jumping through a window as police busted into a flat where he was hiding.

Le Parisien newspaper reported Thursday police found cash in a car in which an unidentified man and woman had fled the area.

But after carefully counting it they realised about half the estimated 3.1 million euros was still missing.

"More than half" the money has still not been recovered, police told AFP.

A suspected accomplice, a 29-year-old woman, was also charged and held in custody on Saturday, the prosecutors' office in Bobigny said.

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